Tag: Korean War

“How Would Churchill Tweet?” appeared in Nation­al Review, 12 August 2017.

Since Pres­i­dent Trump has tak­en office, the pub­lic has quick­ly learned to get its polit­i­cal news from a nov­el source—namely, the President’s Twit­ter account.

The move to this plat­form rep­re­sents a shift in the nature of pol­i­tics, both for good and for ill. Trump might be among the first polit­i­cal lead­ers to use this medi­um to attack oppo­nents or make major announce­ments. He is cer­tain­ly not the first to uti­lize the kind of brevi­ty the plat­form requires to make his points.

Such brevi­ty also char­ac­ter­ized the rhetor­i­cal style of Win­ston Churchill, whose wit, humor and insight com­ple­ment­ed his deci­sive and effec­tive polit­i­cal lead­er­ship.…

Korea was a prob­lem in 1952—as it is today. “Is the Prime Min­is­ter aware of the deep con­cern felt by the peo­ple of this coun­try at the whole ques­tion of the Kore­an con­flict?” an oppo­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment asked the-then Mr. Churchill.

“I am ful­ly aware of the deep con­cern felt by the hon­or­able mem­ber in many mat­ters above his com­pre­hen­sion,” Churchill quipped. Which avoid­ed respond­ing to an unan­swer­able ques­tion.

Self-Preservation’s Jarring Gong

How do you answer the Kore­an ques­tion? There are no good choic­es. The Sino-Russ­ian pro­pos­al for the U.S. to aban­don joint mil­i­tary exer­cis­es in exchange for anoth­er promise by the North to stop build­ing mis­siles and test­ing nukes is a non-starter.…

What can we learn by com­par­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s dis­missal of Gen­er­al McChrys­tal to Churchill’s dis­missals of Gen­er­als Wavell and Auchin­leck, two dis­tin­guished com­man­ders in World War II? I hope it will not be anoth­er reminder of how stan­dards of con­duct have dete­ri­o­rat­ed.